Early Modern Faces: European Portraiture, ca. 1480-1780

This exhibition brings together nearly ninety Old Master paintings and prints by some of the most famous artists of Renaissance and Baroque Europe: Van Dyck, Veronese, Zurbaran, Rembrandt, Goya, and Poussin, among others.

The goal of the show is to explore the early development of European portraits. The rise of the portrait was one of the fundamental artistic developments of early-modern art. Yet there has always been a fundamental tension between the drive to record the actual person's appearance and the desire to document a social, historical, or ideal persona. Artists also wanted to make their mark, shaping portraits in ways that would highlight their knowledge and skill.

This is the largest exhibition of Old Master art ever held at the Newcomb Art Gallery, and one of the most important shows of European art in the history of New Orleans. Most of the loans are drawn from the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Collection of Houston.